Join the Stone Soup Writers’ Community
Read, Write, Create
Stone Soup, the leading literary magazine by kids, offers classes and workshops for children ages 8–14. Classes meet on Saturdays via Zoom at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. Explore our current class offerings through Eventbrite.
“We are impressed with the marvelous writing our nine year old is doing through this workshop!”
— Ronny Asher, parent
2024 Class Schedule
Winter Session: January 27 – April 6
Spring Session: Check back soon!
Summer Session, in collaboration with Society of Young Inklings
Fall Session: To be announced
“Thank you for continuing this workshop and for helping my daughter gain confidence in herself, not just as a writer but as a teenager who’s just trying to find her voice in this world.”
— Lauren Kline, parent
Courses & Faculty
Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett: Saturdays, 11 AM Pacific (Winter, Spring, Fall Sessions)
About Conner Bassett, Creative Writing Instructor
C Dylan Bassett is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His fiction and poetry are published in Chicago Review, Iowa Review, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. He started teaching a regular series of Stone Soup writing workshops and a summer camp class in 2021.
To get a sense of the sort of topics Conner’s classes cover, please click here.
Past Courses & Faculty
Writing Workshop with William Rubel
This is a class for highly motivated writers, aged 9-14, who want to be challenged. Most of the students are subscribers and/or contributors to Stone Soup. Writing Workshop members join a community of like-minded students. They find inspiration in the weekly presentations and discussions, and relish the opportunity to hear the work of their peers and share their own work if they wish. Many of the students in this class are working at a very high level, while others are moving at a different pace. Whatever their current level, this class is appropriate for students who are truly passionate about writing and want to practice and improve their skills. Your child will be introduced to college-level writing concepts. Basic writing skills are assumed.
About William Rubel, Founder and Creative Writing Instructor.
William is the founder of Stone Soup and the Children’s Art Foundation. In 1972, he gathered together a group of fellow students at the University of California Santa Cruz who shared his vision of creating a magazine written by and for children to highlight and inspire their creative talents.
William is also an author specializing in traditional foodways, the history of bread, and Early Modern British kitchen gardens. His book on hearth cooking, The Magic of Fire (2002), was a World Gourmand Cookbook and l’Ordre du Mérite agricole award winner and a James Beard nominee. His second book was Bread, a global history (2011). He is currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press and has contributed articles to Mother Earth News.
William lives in Santa Cruz with his daughter, Stella, and their cat, chickens, rabbits, and aviary birds. You can read more about his other interests at his personal website.
To get a sense of the sort of topics his workshop cover, please click here.
Stone Soup Book Club for Writers with Maya Mahony
Students should source their own copy of the book of the month and make sure they have read it in advance. Our Book Club is run by its members under the guidance of Maya Mahony. You can see a list of all the books the club has read and discussed on our Book Club page.
About Maya Mahony, Book Club Facilitator
Maya Mahony is an MFA student in fiction at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Maya has tutored creative writing to elementary, middle, and high schoolers, and last summer designed and taught her own creative writing camp. Maya loves to write and read young adult and middle grade novels, and cannot wait to discuss some great books with Stone Soupers!
For an idea of what Book Club is like, click here to read a Book Club Report.
Portraits of Self and Others: An Introduction to Short-Form Filmmaking with Isidore Bethel
In this class, writing first-person texts, recording still images and short videos, and interpreting their meanings aloud were starting points for developing individual approaches to filmmaking. Over the course of our time together, students brainstormed, workshopped, edited, and presented a short film. Discussions and writing about other filmmakers and their work complemented our own filmmaking journeys. The class favored examples from nonfiction and first-person filmmaking, where a film’s stakes spill over into real life.
About Isidore Bethel, Filmmaker
Isidore Bethel is a director, editor, and producer, whose filmmaking focuses on moments where individuals reinvent themselves through storytelling. His directorial debut Liam received the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival’s Jury Prize in 2018, and his second feature Acts of Love premiered at Hot Docs in 2021. His work as editor and producer has screened at Cannes (Official Selection and ACID), on Netflix, on US public television, at the Museum of Modern Art, and at the Pompidou Center, receiving 16 festival awards, a Mexican Academy and European Film Academy nomination, and a New York Times Critic’s Pick. He has mentored filmmakers through programs such as the Aristoteles Workshop in Romania, UnionDocs in New York, Sundance’s Art of Editing fellowship, and Doc Amazonie Caraïbe in French Guiana. He is a US and French citizen and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Parsons Paris, and France’s national film school, La Fémis. Filmmaker Magazine included him among its “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2020.
